History Book: Let freedom ring

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JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. 

Next up on the WORLD History Book: The sound of freedom.

On June 6th, 1944, the mayor of Philadelphia struck the Liberty Bell on the side seven times—once for each letter in the word: Liberty. 

It was D-Day, and the bell rang as Allied forces invaded Normandy.

AUDIO: The seven strokes of Liberty, from the world-famed Liberty Bell.

[Bell rings]

ROUGH: It’s one of the only recordings of the bell after a major fracture famously appeared in the 1800s.

The bell is one of the most iconic symbols of freedom in America—from its daily use during the Revolutionary War, to a rallying cry during the movement for abolition.

EICHER: But its story has transformed through legends, myths, and a collective memory of the American founding.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the story.

EMMA EICHER: For more than 250 years, the Liberty Bell has found its home in Philadelphia. It used to ring from the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House.

SOUND: [Wind, car honks, people talking]

TOURIST: Want to go see the big Bell?

Today, it hangs from a wooden yoke made of elm, safe behind glass at the downtown Liberty Bell Center.

Tourist Gary Claassen is visiting historical sites and he says the bell is one of his first stops.

GARY CLAASSEN: There's a whole lot of awesome stuff about our nation's history, things that we need to remember, be able to cherish.

Although the bell is known today as a symbol of freedom, it hasn’t always been. Its story has become mythologized and deeply embedded in the cultural memory of America’s founding.

The bell was commissioned in 1751 from the White Chapel Bell Foundry in London. Then, it made the voyage to Philadelphia.

MICHAEL HATTEM: And it arrived in August of 1752.

That’s Michael Hattem. He’s the author of The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History.

He says after the bell arrived on the river docks, someone decided to ring it for the first time.

HATTEM: And it cracked on the spot. [chuckles] You can imagine the horror of many of the onlookers—they've been waiting a long time for this bell to be delivered, you know? To have it crack right on the dock was quite upsetting.

The crack was so large the bell had to be completely melted down and recast.

HATTEM: They delivered it to the city, to the assembly in Philadelphia, and they rang the bell, and it sounded awful.

So they melted it down and recast it again. The second time, the ringing sounded only marginally better. Pennsylvania State University students created a digital model of what it might have sounded like originally.

SOUND: [Sound of bell ringing]

For nearly 90 years, it rang through Philadelphia to call lawmakers to meetings and summon townspeople for public announcements.

Then, the Bell fell silent in the 1840s, after a crack appeared in the bronze. That’s around the same time that the bell became a recognized symbol of liberty in the abolition movement. Its engraved Bible verse resounded with principles of equality and freedom.

HATTEM: The verse is Leviticus 25:10. The verse reads, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

The verse refers to the biblical ‘Year of Jubilee’ in the Old Testament, where Israelites returned property and freed their slaves every 50 years. And when the bell cracked, it took on even more meaning.

HATTEM: It seemed to sort of symbolize the split in the nation over slavery in these years.

As the Liberty Bell grew in significance, so did the legends surrounding it. Many of them have to do with the exact date and cause of the famous crack. Some say it happened in 1824, while tradition points to the funeral of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835.

Still others suggest it happened on George Washington’s birthday in February, 1846. The story goes that the bell was already damaged, and stopped ringing for good.

HATTEM: One Philadelphia newspaper said that the bell had been “irretrievably broken, and rendered dumb.”

Another popular tale is that the bell rang on Independence Day, 1776. Although it likely did, scholars haven’t found any historical evidence.

Hattem says these myths strengthen the cultural memory of the American Revolution.

HATTEM: The way the Revolution lives on is through the stories… right?...the stories that we tell about it and the meanings that we attribute to it. And symbols like the Liberty Bell.

And it’s through the shared language of the Founding—like liberty, freedom, tyranny, and equality—that Americans find a shared identity.

HATTEM: We do all fundamentally agree that those ideals are important, even if we don't all agree on how we define them, you know? And so, in some sense, there is this sort of underlying consensus to our political culture, and that comes from the Revolution and how we tell the stories about it.

Every year, millions of Americans visit the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Tourist Gary Claassen says it’s a reminder of founding ideals.

CLAASSEN: We fought a lot for the chance to be free and to have the inspiration to be able to keep that going for future generations.

Although the bell sits silent now, its story continues to resonate throughout American history.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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